Symbiosis
by Sobriquett
Summary: Symbiosis, a relationship between two people in which each person is dependent upon and receives reinforcement, whether beneficial or detrimental, from the other. Canon, platonic ExA; 28 vignettes set over 60 years. Normally updated daily.
1. 1950

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight _and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

* * *

_1950_

There's a _girl_ in his room.

It irritates Edward that this is his first thought – this hasn't happened before, _ever_ - but thankfully he's capable of tracking a multitude of concepts and designs at once. He's carefully considering the thoughts of his family below, three distinct voices explaining simultaneously and silently about the pair of vampires who had swept into their house, one mischief personified and the other danger. Mischief had greeted them all by name, known details that were frightening given the family's attempts at secrecy, and then asked when she could move in. Danger had not said a word.

Fragments of these memories flicker through the family's minds. They're explaining who the scarred man on the back porch is to a flexing Emmett, who was hunting with Edward when the pair arrived and is barely restraining his instincts now they're home. Edward fights to piece the shards together into one complete mirror as Mischief hums the song he was planning to play after he'd changed.

"Who are _you_?" Edward snaps, realising belatedly that she's emptying the last of his belongings from his drawers by the window into a crate at her feet.

The girl, seraphic in grace but imp-like in stature, spins perfectly on the toes of her left foot and leaps over the crate between them. She stills; she beams.

"You must be Edward," she says.

Edward growls.

"My name is Alice," she continues, unperturbed. "I hope you don't mind. Your room had the best view, and there's only one of you to move, and it seemed fairer to move just you than Carlisle and Esme or Emmett and Rosalie." She smiles. When he doesn't return the expression, she shrugs, unsurprised.

Alice sits on the bed. Edward growls again, louder. This is more of a snarl.

"Don't worry," she says. "You and I are going to be the best of friends. You'll forgive me for this soon enough. It won't even take a week."

Her smile is like a sunbeam, and the rays through the window on her skin cast rainbow designs across the walls. If this had been thirty years ago, he would have completely forgotten her presence, enraptured by the pattern. The fact that her honey eyes only consider the colors for a moment before returning to his tells him they must be a similar age.

"I have a gift too, Edward." She pats the bed beside her, inviting him to sit. He shakes his head and keeps his difference. She shrugs, again unsurprised. "Listen to me," she says with another sunshine smile.

"I am."

She rolls her eyes then closes them. "Not like that. You know, _your _kind of listening."

With a sigh, he focuses in on her mind, then reels back at the images launched at him. A patient grin is smeared across her face, and she is showing him things he cannot comprehend.

Edward squeezes his eyes shut too, in concentration. The colors inside his mind are far more intriguing than those on the wall.

They are images of the pair of them, clearly in different parts of the country, different seasons, with different members of the family, but in every one they are together, stood no further than a few yards apart, even when Jasper grasps Alice's hand or they are engaged in totally distinct activities.

"What is this?" Edward asks, eyes still closed, watching Alice watch him play the piano.

The images stop. Her eyes open and his follow. "Our future."

In his cloudy existence, spells of sunshine.

* * *

**  
Notes:**

Thank you to Kyrene and telrracs for the beta. These are 28 vignettes, one for every day of February (yes, daily updates), all Alice/Edward canon moments over sixty years, and ostensibly for Shereebedee, because of the awesome surprises she made for the Rehabbers this Christmas.

This was cheaper than two dozen pizzas, Sheree. (:


	2. 1956

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight_ and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

* * *

_1956_

"Alice?"

Alice knows exactly what he's going to ask. _Don't, Edward._

"But-"

"Just don't, okay?"

It's still unnerving to Edward, having someone else in his head when he's used to being in others', but he doesn't complain. The first thing Alice taught him – by example – was discretion. They are good with secrets, being privy to them nearly every moment of their lives without respite. Leaving things unsaid makes their gifts bearable.

"I worry about you," Edward confesses.

"You don't need to." Alice looks up. She had been sketching, a dark room with a single bed, iron bed frame and crisp white sheets. She smiles at Edward. "I'm happy. I'm safe. I don't feel a need to know about my past, so why would you?"

He glances at her drawing, precisely detailed in places but with the majority cast in profound shadow. "You know that's a lie."

Edward doesn't enquire often, but every few months he decides to ask Alice about her life before. What was her life like as a human? Where did she live? How old was she when she was changed? Who changed her?

She never answers. She never even lets him ask the question.

Edward can see inside of her though. When he decides to ask, her mind is as blank on the subject as his is. This scares him.

He tells himself he's scared for her, that something so bad could have happened to her that her mind, even as a vampire, won't let her remember. Rosalie suffered an ordeal herself, but remembers like the first time she saw Emmett. Edward remembers, too, in diamond-hard detail.

But Alice…

She's a blank sheet of paper, waiting to be sketched in.

There's a subconscious worry that she's already mastered a defence against his talent, and at first he worried that she had something to hide, but he knows that's a trivial concern. He pushes the thought away and concentrates on her hands, snow white and ice cold, smooth as a clear winter's day and more powerful than the vicious storm she saw coming this evening.

They are at an impasse. Edward is watching Alice's hand hover over her drawing, but the pencil is stationary between her fingers.

They are still for a long time. The sun sets. That was the strangest thing about becoming a vampire – the irrelevance of time passing, how it would sometimes hobble past like the old man he would never be, and the rest of the time it would flee with effortless agility like the gazelle he hunted.

Alice's pencil didn't move, not even a tremor, but her lips did when the only light in the room was the glow of the dwindling fire. "Nothing."

"Hmm?"

Alice's word out of nowhere caught Edward by surprise. She answers verbally before he can make sense of the jumble in her head.

"Nothing. I remember nothing of my human life. My first memory is of me, like this, and I saw Jasper's face. And that's it."

The last word is breathy; if they were human, she would sniff, blink back tears. They're not. Alice's fist clenches and the pencil she was grasping snaps, the section inside her palm crumbling to dust. Edward takes the two ends and discards them with perfect, blind aim into the embers of the dying fire. The dust he ignores.

He grips Alice's hand. She grips back with both hands.

"One day, I'll find out for you," he promises.

**

* * *

**

**Notes**

_Thank you to Kyrene, as ever, and allysue08 for playing middle-of-the-night beta. For Shereebedee, as ever. The next is my favourite so far._


	3. 1969

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight_ and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

* * *

_1969_

"Aren't brides supposed to be nervous?"

Edward wouldn't dare ask this question if he was with any other member of his family, for fear of Esme's frowns, Carlisle's too gentle advice, his brothers' ridicule and Rosalie's silence, but Edward trusts Alice. She's the only one who never treats him like an innocent boy they both know he's not. He's a monster, but Alice just rolls her eyes at his brooding and carries on. It frustrates Edward, but maybe it's a relief not to be coddled.

It's almost as if they are the two ends of one spectrum. Edward's black blends into Alice's white so one can't quite tell were they separate – they're literally in one another's heads, with all the terror and trust inherently spawned.

"Everything will be perfect, Edward. You know I know this, and I know Jasper will be there because he always has been, and he's not one for rash decisions. A lot like you."

Edward shrugs, knowing Alice can see the movement in the mirror. She's preening for the final time before the long walk down a short aisle. She asked Edward to give her away to the surprise of the family, and he was honoured.

"One day, I'll be giving you away," Alice joked.

Edward's eyes darted toward the heavens, but he laughed. "Not likely, little sister."

"True. I'll probably like the bride more than you." She stuck her tongue out at him. It was a puerile gesture, but Alice brought out the child in him.

Edward was behind her in an instant, fingers teasing her ribs. Alice shrieked and twirled out of his grip. "No fair. You'll ruin the dress." Her voice dropping in decibels, she wrapped her arms around his back and spoke into his chest. "Besides, you'll have given yourself away completely already."

Edward's arms laced around her in return. His words were joking, but his tone was not. "Is this a fact?"

Edward knows she's looked before, spent many hours searching for this kind of happiness for him, but she can't see it. Edward also knows this means it's probably not there, but he is… content. It's like a cookie without the milk, or a stained glass window without the sun burning through.

He might not be happy, but he's content.

"It's time," Alice says.

*

After the wedding, a quiet affair with only the family in attendance at Alice's request, Edward is spinning Alice around the dance floor. Carlisle and Esme are swaying quietly in the corner to a gentle waltz, but Edward is leading Alice in grand, swooping steps that have her head thrown back in raucous laughter.

Even Edward is grinning.

Emmett and Rosalie are conspicuously absent, Carlisle and Esme in their own world, and Jasper has his nose discreetly in the record collection, and Edward and Alice are as close to alone as they have been since the morning.

When the song ends, Alice tugs Edward by the hand to a table at the side. Alice had insisted on having a table set for the reception even though they didn't eat, for speeches and the façade of humanity. Besides, she said, it wasn't often she could draw out Jasper's charisma in front of others. He'd kept it hidden for years after the wars, and Alice's greatest skill is drawing others out of their shells.

Alice absently chews a nail as she watches Jasper. "What do you think your wedding will be like?" she asks.

Edward shrugs. "What wedding?"

"I think it'll be a much bigger affair than this. I won't let you have it any other way. A room full of people…"

"Like who?"

"A culinary masterpiece of a cake…"

"Redundant."

"And the most beautiful blushing bride you'll ever have seen…"

"We can't blush, Alice."

She shrugs too, a gesture not graceful enough for a fairy in a queen's dress. "Just a thought. But it will be perfect."

* * *

**Notes**

Thank you to Kyrene for playing beta. She updated her fic today. If your own fic is your baby, _Venenum_ is like that favourite niece you love like your own. Still for Shereebedee, because I'm too lazy to send her pizza.


	4. 1991

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight_ and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

_

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_

_1991_

_I'm worried about Jasper._

A corner of Edward's lip creeps upward and his eyes drop in sympathetic acknowledgement of Alice's words. He knows they are meant for him from how her head leans slightly in his direction as the images flicker through their consciousness.

He leans back in the chair and raises his arms in a stretch, an unnecessary fidget that's now second nature even at home after their decades of repeating high school and occasionally college.

"You seem restless, Edward," Alice says, glancing at Carlisle, lost in a book in the corner of the study. Jasper is in the garden, and they can see him stalking around the lawn through the window. "I want to go for a run. Join me?"

Edward shrugs and stands. "If you like."

Alice slips off her shoes in the library and sprints from there, Edward following close behind but not quite catching up. He can see in her mind that she wants a moment alone. He drops back three or four miles so he cannot hear her mind, but he can still track her scent. A hundred miles from home, Alice veers suddenly left, and Edward joins her moments later on a precipice.

"How's he holding up?" Alice says. She is sat on the ledge, feet dangling three hundred feet above a deep gorge, a fast-flowing river a slice of blue amongst the grey and vibrant green. Edward lies beside her on his side, facing out over the edge. He rests his head on her knee, and Alice's hands tangle in his hair, the same length as hers.

"He's… fine. Struggling a little, but… fine."

"Is there any danger?"

This is her usual question, and she answers it for herself with her gift as well as Edward's. Cycling through snapshots of the immediate future, none are stained red and she leans back too, eyes on the cloudless sky. It is late, and they only shimmer in the twilight.

"Of course not."

Alice sighs. "Thank you."

"You know that though. What's wrong, really?"

"It doesn't matter," she says aloud, but Edward picks her answer out of her mind. _Jasper_.

"Why are you worried about him?"

"Please don't pry, Edward."

"I'm your big brother. I'm supposed to look after you."

"You being taller than me is just the burden of biology," she teases, trying to change the subject. Her hands tighten in Edward's hair, and he knows her tension. He shares it. He pushes.

"You worry that he's bored, that he hates this life."

She huffs. Edward hears her consider berating him for sifting through her mind at will, but she apologises. She knows he cannot help it. "Sometimes." _He's an old man, lived this life nearly twice as long as I have. High school is every kind of torture imaginable for him – physical, mental, emotional - but he suffers for me. Sometimes I wonder how much more he can take. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better for us to leave._

There are some words even Alice cannot say in her head, but Edward gets the picture, literally: his face. He's keeping them grounded. She's said before that he is the glue of the family. The purpose keeps Edward grounded too.

"If Jasper doesn't want to go to high school, he doesn't have to," Edward reasoned. "We're going to be moving on again soon; if not this summer it'll be the next. Why don't we go back to Ithaca? He could do another degree, something challenging, interesting. And we can continue to relish the unending delights of high school."

A smile ghosts over Alice's face at her brother's sarcasm. It feels almost human to watch the stars with her brother. She wonders if she had a brother in her human life, if she felt as close to that boy as she does to Edward.

"Maybe," she concedes.

"You're my best friend, you know."

"I know. For now."

* * *

**Notes**

No beta for this one; apologies in advance for inevitable errors. Thank you to Kyrene for glancing over my outline, Babette12 for her ideas, and Shereebedee for making me smile when I needed it twelve hours ago. Now, it's nearly 8am, the time I consider my daily cut-off. Nighty night, and thank you. Suggestions welcome.


	5. 2001

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight_ and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

_

* * *

_

_2001_

"Edward?" Alice knocks at his door. "Come downstairs."

"Why?" He doesn't expect her to answer. He takes the image straight out of her mind: birthday cake, silly hats, and presents. "_What_?" The second question does need an answer.

"Come on, we're having a birthday party."

"We don't celebrate birthdays. Alice, you don't even _know_ when you were born."

"Shut up, twin. I'm borrowing yours, and we're one hundred today. Come on."

She twirls over to him at the desk and grips his wrist with both hands. She pulls, and Edward slides reluctantly out of the chair and onto the carpet. He stays sat unceremoniously on the ground, smirking up at Alice. She giggles then slides down beside him.

When she leans her head against his shoulder, the tone darkens. "One hundred years old…" he murmurs.

"Don't tell me you hadn't thought about it."

"No, I had. It's just that I thought I could avoid it. Trust you to throw me a party."

"I'm not throwing _you_ a party, I'm throwing _us _a party."

"I know, and that's the only reason I haven't thrown _you_ out."

Alice laughs. "Don't deny me this, twin. It'll be fun. An hour or two with the family and you can come back up here to mope like the old man you are."

"And you'll inevitably nag me like the old woman you are."

"Shut up, twin."

"Let's just get this over with."

*

The party is not much of a party. There is a cake with one hundred candles. Emmett is having too much fun with the matches, oblivious to Rosalie looking as though she is trying to put them out with her eyes. Jasper hovers against the wall, book in hand and smile on face. He rolls his eyes at Edward as Alice pulls her twin down the stairs, but Edward feels instantly warmer. It's like the sun shining on his insides as Jasper echoes his wife's joy.

Esme beams as they approach, adjusting the paper plates in relation to the cake and hats and party poppers, everything arranged with absolute precision. Carlisle shakes his son's hand, wishing Edward a happy birthday silently, and kisses Alice's cheek. Then Alice manoeuvres Edward to stand before the iced beast.

He glares at the white slab of sugar as Alice slips a blue foil party hat onto his head and a glitter tiara onto hers. "So, we make a wish and blow out the candles, right?"

"And we sing," Emmett says, examining the bottom of a party popper, green hat perched lopsidedly in his hair.

"No, we don't." Rosalie is twirling her hat in her hands. She's the only one who hasn't yet given in.

"Let's just get this over with," Edward say, pressing his lips together trying to repress Jasper's mirth at the scene.

Alice giggles, not fighting her husband, and leans forward, feeling the warmth of the flames against her face. It's like sunshine. She loves it.

_I wish… Edward had his own sunshine._

Without waiting for Edward, she blows out every one of the hundred candles in one long gust.

*

Later, they are alone on the roof of the house.

"Does it really feel like you're a hundred, Alice?"

"For me? No. I can't remember the first twenty years, can I?"

"No, I didn't mean it like that. Does it _feel_ like you've lived a hundred years?"

"It feels a lot more than eighty, if that's what you mean. Well… I don't know. It's both more and less at once."

"I know."

"I've never been as happy as I have been with Jasper. Those first three decades alone were one tedious, interminable day, just waiting for him. Now, we have a day routine and a night routine and time passes so quickly. But there's been so much _change_. There's no denying it's been a very long time."

"It feels like forever to me."

"Because you're alone."

"I didn't say that."

"You were going to, and it's obvious anyway. I can't wait for the day you find your Jasper."

The silence is long. Edward picks at the thoughts of passing drivers like one would pick at unwanted birthday cake with a full stomach. He can feel the sensation, despite not having been human for over eighty years. Alice makes him feel human.

"I don't need a mate when I have you."

Alice sighs into his shoulder again. "It's… it's difficult to explain, Edward. You've been in our heads, you know all of this, but it's like… it's like I'm the earth. You're my moon, constant and close, controlling the tides, but Jasper's my sun, brilliant and dazzling and keeping everything alive."

"But the sun burns."

"You want to live in the sun, really. And someday, someone will make you."

* * *

**Notes**

Thank you to Kyrene for being my beta. This was supposed to be tomorrow's, but I'm silly and wrote this one first. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and I haven't replied to yet. Stupid FFn fail. Two more pre-Twilight, then enter Bella. Still for the lovely Shereebedee.


	6. 2002

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight _and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

* * *

_2002_

High School with _just_ Alice is, whether Edward will admit it or not, fun. Or at least more fun than with all of the siblings. The two of them find it far easier to blend in, but they are still their own quiet, exclusive clique, and that made them appear targets.

Edward, over six feet tall, beautiful and arrogant, is easily shunned, fawned over but left alone, and quite content with the situation. Alice, however, is insatiable and tries to make friends, or at least acquaintances.

Their silent, infallible, symbiotic relationship is easily apparent, though, and their unusual closeness makes Alice a target for ridicule when she approaches the wider student population.

People would taunt her for her height, her short hair, the quirky way she dresses that doesn't belong in a small town, the way she speaks, how her eyes will sometimes glaze over and she'll zone out. Alice may have thick, granite-hard skin, but venom stings.

These are things she cannot change.

Edward sympathises. When he realises that she is actually hurt by the things they say, ideas began to spawn and twist and contort in his mind.

"No, Edward, you can't," Alice says at lunch time, rolling an apple between her palms, enjoying the feel of the waxy skin. Her eyes are downcast, her shoulders drooping, but internally she is far less passive than she appears. She's been watching their futures, and can now see an inevitable confrontation at the end of the day.

Without any conscious intent, Edward's imagination starts to wander, and there is nothing of interest to curb it. It begins to sprint.

_What are you thinking? You can't do that. We'd have to leave tonight._

Edward shrugs. At Alice's words, his tentative plans solidify.

_Edward..._

With a slow roll of his eyes, he alters the plan slightly in his mind. _We'll still have to leave._

"Not much to leave behind."

Alice sighs. "Fine, but I have to be there."

*

Three days later, after school, instead of making their usual quick getaway, Edward waits for Alice outside her last class. She doesn't like to skip and it has been a long time since she's studied French, even if it is only high school.

He leans against a long row of green lockers, ten yards or so from the classroom, and waits. He can hear their intentions in their minds, and sees the reality in Alice's. He smirks.

He shifts his books to appear human, the bell rings, and the doors open. The boys he's waiting for – four of them – hover just outside the door. Alice is the last one out, head down and feet shuffling. At first, he praises her ability to play a part.

Then Edward's eyes narrow. She isn't pretending. His sister is sensitive, seeks every human experience she can find. She is sweet and accepting and entirely too trusting. A good soul.

It's puerile, but he wants to squish them.

Unfortunately, he can't. The family wouldn't approve, and they would have to relocate. Instead, he's spent three days watching, waiting and listening. He has catalogued their insecurities and secrets, researched, theorised.

Edward smiles. They haven't seen him yet – there's quite a crowd – but he can see and hear them. They round on Alice, throw a cruel sobriquet over their shoulders. Edward's amusement fades. He knew it was coming, but he didn't expect the effect. Unlike his sister, he can't see the future.

He strides forward, cutting through the crowd like a white hot poker through a block of butter. Children melt away from him. He looks, is, feral.

Edward keeps his hands behind his back; he must be sure not to hit them. Even if he were human, he would have wanted to kill them. Being the monster that he is, it is almost certain that he would. Alice flurries to his side.

He speaks to each child in turn. One barb for each, dipped in venom and thrust with precision into their hearts. In thirty-two seconds, he reveals their secrets and fears and things they never wanted another to know, never mentioned even aloud, to one hundred students. Edward leers, and leaves.

Alice follows, almost dancing. She won't be the target any more.

* * *

**Notes**

Thank you to Kyrene for continuing to be my awesome beta, Babette12 for the idea, and the WC ladies for their help. Thank you to thepinktabby for inspiring me to write, and being so lovely in her reply to my reply. It's good to be back.

One of my one-shots, _L'Heure Bleue_, is a finalist in the Indie Twific Awards, under the Love Conquers All one-shot category. My competition is scary, and all the stories up are worth a read.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Cullen Contest deadline has been extended to March 28th. My rather late example will probably be posted tomorrow, first lemon and all. Thank you for reading!


	7. 2003

**Symbiosis**

**Disclaimer**

Stephenie Meyer owns _Twilight _and its characters. No profit is being made from this story.

_

* * *

_

2003

"I have a good feeling about this place," Alice says, looking up at the white house.

"Me too." Esme is laden with three enormous and heavy boxes. When she pauses next to Alice on her way to Carlisle's new office, it's a surreal sight, the two diminutive women dwarfed by their loads.

"I think we'll _all_ be happy here." Alice's eyes flick from Esme to Edward, who is directing Emmett with the piano, characteristically pained veil obscuring his features with downturned eyebrows.

Esme falters as a comprehending smile dawns across her face. "I _really_ hope so. Have you seen anything?" Alice sees the boxes quiver in Esme's arms as she controls her reaction; Esme is intensely affectionate and the family love her for it.

Alice beams, but doesn't answer the question. "I have a good feeling."

*

Edward hasn't touched his piano in years, not since well before his hundredth birthday. While it always has been cathartic, sometimes he likes to just angst; moping makes things bearable. Selfish as it is, he doesn't have the same emotional outlets as his family, and not nearly as many as humans. For him, this works. At least he gets to be normal for a little while, even if his funks last years, not hours. Another curse of the unchanging vampire, he muses.

He's standing on the stairs of their new home, watching Esme direct Emmett with his prize instrument. She holds the stool.

"I don't know why we always take this thing with us," Rosalie spits, moving through the living room with a box of miscellanea for the kitchen, "when he doesn't even play the damn thing."

Alice, as much as she loves her sister, sticks her tongue out at Rosalie and closes the kitchen door on her. Everyone winces as Emmett lowers the piano less than gently and the jolt of sound slices through the air. Alice is the least fazed, knowing already that there is no real damage, and she drags Edward by the wrist down and across to the instrument of his relief before he can protest.

Alice plants him on the chair and sits herself in his lap, arms wrapped around his neck. She pecks his cheek.

"Won't you play something for us, twin? Something to christen the new house?"

"No." The syllable is sharp. Edward rolls his eyes to the heavens; only Alice can see that he isn't outright dismissing her. He knows it's hopeless, she knows how to make him cave.

She giggles, then turns her most adorably pleading eyes on him. Sometimes, playing him like her big brother works. He has a sense of duty, of obligation, that he cannot resist.

"Alice…"

"Edward…"

"How exactly does one 'christen' a house with music?"

"Please, Edward?"

He doesn't answer. He stands quickly, but Alice keeps her arms around his neck and holds on, feet dangling a few inches off the ground. It isn't like she can hurt him. She still smiles.

"Please?" Alice glances over Edward's shoulder at Jasper.

With a short-lived glare at his sister, Edward relaxes back onto the bench under their combined efforts and Alice shuffles to sit beside him rather than on top of him.

"Thank you," she says, wrapping an arm around her brother's waist.

"I suppose you'll want to sing." Edward's hands are hovering over the keys.

Alice doesn't answer. Instead, she weaves from side-to-side to the tune in her head. Edward plucks the melody from her mind and poises his fingers in place.

When Alice squeezes his waist, he starts to play. It's stiff at first but he has forgotten nothing and within seconds the notes rush together like small streams joining a great river; Alice's voice swirls over the top like the breeze that rushes through your hair and rustles the leaves, or maybe the windchimes that sing as they swing.

One melody evolves into another, Alice never needing to rest her voice and Edward feeling no physical exertion, no matter how passionately he plays. Time passes, but in quavers and minims, notes and chords, not minutes and seconds.

Alice's arm stays around Edward's waist, even as she sways with the melody when the piece slows to a lugubrious pavane, and although her hand never leaves his shirt, she twirls behind him when he shifts into a more optimistic sonata. He pours every anxious thought in nearly a decade through his fingers and into the strings of the piano. How did Alice know he needed this?

As the song closes, Edward's fingers stay pressed against the keys as the notes vibrate through him. He wants to float. Alice laughs quietly and then they turn in unison. The entire family have been drawn like flowers to sunlight. Esme looks like she wants to cry and Edward doesn't hear what Emmett is thinking before he says it aloud… if indeed he did think.

"That was awesome!" Emmett booms. "But seriously, Edward, you are totally whipped."

* * *

**Notes**

Still for Shereebedee. Thank you to RubyWednesday for the unbelievably lovely rec on TLYDF, and hello to everyone who's found their way over as a result; it's a pleasure to meet you. Also, thank you to MariShal, who asked for me to include a tiny detail at some point and inadvertently salvaged this entire chapter, and to this chapter's beta, thepinktabby.

_L'Heure Bleue _is still an Indie finalist; there are only 20 hours left to vote. I posted a new one-shot too – AH, Jekyll/Cullen, my first lemon, source of anxiety to me – called _The Shipwreck of Reason_. Contest ends Sunday, link's on my profile.

It is 8am. Please pray for my bestie, who has to see me in four hours. I'm going to pass out now.


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